Читать книгу Hometown Killer - Carol J. Rothgeb - Страница 11

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She didn’t struggle. . . . She acquiesces . . . but Phree,

I think, fought him a little bit. . . . But I think Martha

was just . . . she didn’t have a chance. . . . She just gave

up. . . .

—Captain Steve Moody¹

The bodies were almost completely hidden beneath the skids and the brush, but the boys could see patches of clothing and flesh as they circled around to the far side of the pile. After wading through the knee-deep water, and climbing ashore on the other side of the pond, they were met with the gruesome sight that would forever be burned into their memories.

As they inched closer through the thick brush, hoping against hope that some of their friends were playing a very cruel joke, they could see the blood-soaked hair of what appeared to be the body of a young girl, facedown. Next to her, their arms almost touching, was the body of another young girl. A huge rock was completely covering her head. She was also facedown.

They had no way of knowing that two girls about their age who lived in this neighborhood had been reported missing the night before. But the stillness—and the buzzing of the flies— whispered to the boys that this was not a hoax. It was painfully real.

It was the last weekend of summer vacation—the last Sunday afternoon before homework and teachers and early bedtime. It was a perfect day for the two young brothers until they left a picnic at a nearby church and rode their bikes to the wooded area near the man-made pond behind the bakery, an amazingly secluded area only one short block from a busy street.

A small sign on a nearby tree read NO FISHING, but the boys just wanted to watch the goldfish in the tiny pond. They had been there many times before and they were curious when they saw two wooden pallets at the edge of the water on the other side. There were dozens of pallets on the loading dock of the redbrick warehouse next door, but these two were definitely out of place.

The L-shaped pond, which sits in an alcove with stone walls on both sides and a hill to the back, had been peaceful and serene earlier in the day. But then the boys discovered the terrifying secret.

Alarmed, the boys quickly made their way back to the other side of the pond and back to the church. They searched frantically for their father, but they couldn’t find him, so the older boy—not knowing what else to do—coaxed a friend into going back to the pond with him. When they were almost there, they saw a fire truck up on the hill, past the warehouse. They left their bikes and ran up the very steep hill. By then, Keith was almost hysterical, but, with the help of his friend Jay, he managed to tell the firemen what he and his brother had seen.

The borrowed bicycle that the missing girls had been riding the previous afternoon had been found about two blocks from the pond in a sewer tunnel nicknamed the “Lion’s Cage.” The firefighters had been called to assist the police in retrieving it.

Springfield, Ohio, was once known as the “Rose Capital of the World.” With a population of about seventy thousand, it is located in the southwestern quarter of the state, forty-five miles west of the state capital of Columbus.

In 1983, in the special anniversary issue of Newsweek magazine, Springfield, Ohio, was selected as the example of “the American Dream.” According to the cover: “Our anniversary issue celebrates the men and women who live the news, the unsung people who make our country. . . . It is the true story of America.”

Springfield is probably very much like most other Midwestern towns of its size. The old mixed with the new—and the good with the bad.

Nowhere in town is the mixture of old and new more obvious than in the center of town. The “old” consists of the post office, the courthouse, the county building, and the News-Sun building. The “new” includes city hall, the Clark County Library, the Springfield Inn, Kuss Auditorium, and the Public Safety Building, which also houses the new county jail.

Schuler’s Bakery, “Home of the Homemade,” is located a few blocks east of the center of town on the southwest corner of East Main Street and Penn Street. Everyone in town knows where it is, because they have the best doughnuts for miles around. The bakery is one of the “old, good” places in town.

Beside Schuler’s Bakery, “Penn Street Hill” runs uphill south from East Main Street to East High Street. It is probably the steepest hill in town. A third of the way up the hill is Section Street, running east and west behind the bakery. Strahler’s Food Warehouse is on the southwest corner of Penn Street and Section Street.

It was behind this warehouse, at the edge of the pond, that the search for Phree Morrow and Martha Leach ended. The tragedy and the heartache for their families and friends, and this town, had just begun.

At 3:27 P.M. on August 23, 1992, the chilling message went out over the police radios that two bodies had been found behind Schuler’s Bakery. Although the crime scene was actually adjacent to Strahler’s Food Warehouse, the bakery (the more familiar site) became an easy reference point.

Soon the wail of sirens filled the beautiful Sunday afternoon as emergency and law enforcement personnel converged on the area. Within minutes of being dispatched, Lieutenant John Schrader and Detective Al Graeber, from the Crimes Against Persons Unit, arrived on the scene.

Word spread quickly. Neighbors came. The concerned came. The curious came. And family members of the missing girls came, visibly anxious and distraught, and were kept at bay by the police officers.

The uncaring also came. As they mingled, they drank beer and laughed, caught up in the excitement. At one point Detective Graeber even saw a young man sitting on one of the police cars. He asked him to move.

Soon additional officers were needed at the top and the bottom of the hill. There were hundreds of people trying to find out what had happened.

Meanwhile, two blocks away, the police officers and firemen were finally able to retrieve the bicycle. They also recovered a pair of flowered shorts, a pair of cutoff blue jeans, and a silver hair barrette from the bottom of the Lion’s Cage.

Sergeant Michael Haytas (head of the Crime Scene Unit) had been enjoying the last days of his vacation when he was called and asked to report back to work and process the scene behind Schuler’s. To save time, he had brought his own camera and camcorder from home and had stopped at a drugstore to buy film.

At the pond, behind the yellow tape, the Crime Scene Unit prepared to preserve and record the crime scene. Sergeant Haytas and Debbie Schaffer (of the coroner’s office) approached from the north side of the pond. From that vantage point, they could see nothing amiss, except some skids out of place. The bodies were not visible from that side of the pond—only the skids. As the boys had done earlier, they waded through the shallow water to the other side, careful not to contaminate or destroy any lingering evidence. Sergeant Haytas videotaped the area as they went. One of the first things they noticed was something on the bottom of the pond—a pair of underpants.

Upon reaching the other side, they were met with the same tragic sight that the boys had seen. They could see that the skids were covering only the lower half of the bodies. And through the brush they could see the hair of one of the victims, completely saturated with blood. She was wearing a pink T-shirt with striped sleeves.

A very large rock, with small patches of moss clinging to its surface, was covering the head of the other girl. She was wearing a dark T-shirt.

Sticks and twigs and small trees had been pushed and bent over in an attempt to conceal the bodies. One stick had been deliberately placed between two of the boards and was propped obscenely in the buttocks of one of the girls.

As the scene before him assaulted his eyes and his heart, Sergeant Haytas forced thoughts of his own young daughter from his mind. He had been investigating crime scenes since 1979, but he had never seen anything like this.

Debbie Schaffer made a cursory examination of the crime scene. Dr. Dirk Wood, Clark County coroner, approached the scene from the south. Sergeant Haytas photographed and videotaped the area, then carefully collected the panties from the water and handed them to Captain David Walters to be placed into evidence.

As they fought to keep their emotions in check and went about doing what they were trained to do, they were secretly relieved that they did not yet know the identity of the victims.

The body on the left (looking south) was labeled victim #1 and the body on the right was labeled victim #2.

The two skids and the brush were removed from each victim, placed in clean sheets separately, and labeled. The bodies were side by side, facedown; victim #2’s left hand was almost touching victim #1’s back.

It appeared that someone had “posed” them in almost exactly the same position; each one was slightly on her right side, with her left knee drawn up, a familiar “sleeping” position.

Victim #1 was naked from the waist down, except for a shoe on her left foot. Her right shoe was lying next to her right foot. Victim #2 was also naked from the waist down, except for white socks. Both of her shoes were lying next to her left foot between the two girls.

Victim #2 was rolled over onto a body bag, but because of the blood and dirt that adhered to her skin, especially on her head and face, she could not be immediately identified.

When the large rock was removed from victim #1, they saw that her head was so embedded in the dirt that it was almost flush with the ground surrounding it. She also was rolled over onto a body bag.

A preliminary examination by Dr. Wood revealed that the obvious cause of death was severe head wounds. There were bluebottle-fly eggs present on the bodies, but since they were not hatched, it was determined that the two young females, who appeared to be in the early stages of puberty, had been dead for less than twenty-four hours.

Both bodies were transported to the morgue at Mercy Medical Center.

Even though it was not official at that time, the detectives knew that these were the bodies of Phree Morrow and Martha Leach, the two girls who had been reported missing at 2:08 that morning. Phree was barely twelve years old and Martha was only a few days from her twelfth birthday.

There can probably be no more difficult task, even for seasoned police officers, than investigating the murders of children. Many of them were family men with children of their own. And it was only a matter of time until they would have to notify the parents.

Earlier, while anxiously waiting with the gathering crowd, Bennie Morrow, Phree’s father, collapsed and was transported to the same hospital where the girls’ bodies were taken.

One of the transmissions over the police radio said it all: “This is a mess.” And this was only the beginning.

As church bells rang in the distance and the birds sang in the nearby woods, Sergeant Haytas recorded the scene and the surrounding area on videotape. Dozens of still photographs were also taken.

On a large tree a few feet from the bodies, there was another sign. This one read, NO TRESPASSING OR DUMPING.